Having a household staff...

Huh? You might be wondering....

Yes, we do have a "staff" to help us manage our life here. Currently, we have a house-help and a driver. Hopefully sometime in the near future, we can also find a part-time child-care person too. Honestly, I am still getting used to the fact that we need so much help just to manage our life, but it is what it is. I mean, P and I consider ourselves fairly competent people, but here, we seem to need a lot of help! ;) But, as one of my German friends said, "You don't have a mega supermarket to help make your life a little more manageable or a refrigerator the size of two regular size fridges here...." I can either hire someone to help wash, cut, and help prepare food, or as some folks have chosen, not hire someone and cargo your fridge from back home or own two and a half fridges. It's a lifestyle choice, and we decided that it makes more sense for us to hire a person as it is the norm here. We also decided that it makes more sense to hire a driver to spend the whole day at the repair shop making sure that things are getting fixed as they should rather than having P spend his whole day doing it. It also has made my mobility so much easier. I tried driving that big machine and honestly, I always feel like I am gonna knock over a bicycle rickshaw-wallah or accidentally hit a cow as I try to maneuver away from hitting a motorcyclist. I am so grateful for our car and for a driver.

This week, I started an "interview" process for a part-time child care person. One young woman was introduced to us by a pastor. She shared that her schedule is not as flexible, so she introduced another woman to me yesterday. So, I began the process with her. I told her that I want to take a week to see whether it would be a good fit for her and for us. So, I wanted her to come everyday at 9:30am for two hours this week. I also asked (nicely told) her that I would like for her to come dressed in clean clothes rather than house work clothes. She said she would. This morning, she came by in the same dirty clothes she wore yesterday. I sent her back home and told her to change and come back. She didn't come back. Perhaps she was offended. I spent some time asking a couple of local friends if I had done something wrong and they said, "No. You need to take care of your son. Their hygiene is very important." I agree with their point of view, but perhaps I could have done it more in a culturally appropriate way, although I am not sure what that is. Anyway, I decided that if she can't show up on time (she lives only a few houses down) and can't come dressed clean, I'm not really interested in trying to figure out whether it could work out.

So, after consulting my house help about what I should do, whether I should call her over to my place or whether I should go over to hers, I decided to go over to her place. She was there and the first thing she asked me was whether I was angry. I was a little, but it would be culturally inappropriate to say I was, especially in front of another person she was with. So, I chose not to answer that question and just decided to share with her why I had come. I thanked her and gave her a generous amount for her service yesterday. She explained that she's afraid of the dogs and so she's scared to come to my place. I said, "I don't want you suffer because of the dogs. I know that it's hard for you because you're so afraid. It is okay." This settled for all of us that it meant that she and I both agree that it was not going to work out between us.

Then, the young woman who was previously introduced by a pastor shares with me that she wants to work. Hmmm... I thought. Yesterday she said she couldn't. Now, she says she will make time. I decided that I can't have someone who tells me two different stories and be able to trust my son to her. So, I politely tell her that I need some time to think about it, but if I decide I need her, I will give her a call next week. I would like to find a part-time child-care person, but I decided that I would rather take the time to find someone that I really like, that I can trust, and is dependable than to hire someone who I would need to fire eventually. As a foreigner here, firing someone can be a real big pain in the rear....

It is a real balancing act to be "friendly" and kind to those who work for you, yet also to have some boundary that sets us apart as employer and an employee. I had to reprimand our driver a few days ago because he had taken the car to go visit a friend's place after dropping me off. I only found out because I decided I wanted to leave sooner than he had expected and when I went out, he was no where to be found. I saw him from a distance driving like a mad man trying to get to the location as fast as he could. I could tell that he felt badly and he gave various excuses for why he did what he did, and I listened. But, at the end, I said, "I understand, but you must ask next time if you want to take the car somewhere."

Setting boundaries and holding people to higher standard is not always an easy thing to do, and at that, doing it cross-culturally too! It's even more difficult when I feel like I am still learning about how things work here, what things I want to adopt and what I don't want to....

I was kind of encouraged a few days ago when I visited one my Bengali woman I am becoming friends with. She had two full-time people working for her at home: one for the house and the other for child-care. And, she is a full time stay at home mom. It made me feel like, it's not just me, the "dumb" foreigner who needs a household staff team, but the locals need help too! I guess I'm not that abnormal after all. :)

Job Sharing

Perhaps, I should call it child-care sharing. Whatever way you want to look at it, we are both working and doing child-care, dividing up our work hours. We felt that now is a good time to make this shift as Elijah is becoming more independent and he is no longer dependent on nursing for his nutrients. I have struggled for some time with feelings of guilt for not being the "super stay at home mom," that some wives seem to be happy to take on here. But, I have come to accept the fact that it is okay that I am different. I am a mom who desires to work outside of the home as well as inside of the home. And, as long as we have the flexibility to make that work for us, we decided we should. It is a shift for P, but I am grateful that he is willing to do this for us.

I am finding that I have much more energy at the end of the day since we have started job sharing. It energizes me to be engaged in something other than child-care. I am also happier. It is forcing us to be more efficient in areas of work and house work too. It causes us to prioritize and not waste time. There is more structure to our days which has been good. It has also helped us to put some boundaries in regards to when we are available for work, when we are not, and rather than always working around other people's schedule, others are also having to work around ours. We are juggling more things yet we are finding ourselves working and partnering better. We are now having "team meetings" and having it scheduled into our calendar rather than catching each other here and there to talk or making it the topic of our dinner conversations.

I am grateful that we can job-share and that it has been working out really well for us. Meanwhile, we are still looking for a part-time child care person when we both need to be away or need to get some work done. This coming week, we are going to give it a try with a young woman from our neighborhood. We will see how it goes and hopefully, we'll have a sense for whether this person will work out or not by end of the week.

Who made up that rule?

I've been reading a great book on being a m--ary titled, "On Being a M" by Thomas Hale. For anyone who is preparing to go to the field or is interested in understanding the M life, I highly recommend it. I haven't finished reading it, but I have been really enjoying reading it. He has done a great job of really articulating the unique challenges, joys, and struggles that we as Ms go through... If someone were to ask me, "What is M's life like?" I am tempted to just say, "Go read this book." Honestly, if you really want to understand more, I would recommend that you read it. It is a fun reading too.

He gives lots of stories to illustrate various points. One story in particular, he talks about how we as m--aries are in a life long learning of crossing cultures. He shared a story about a veteran and respected Swedish nurse/m-ary of 30 years in Nepal who had hired a new cook recently. The cook worked out fine except for one perplexing thing. The cook repeatedly put the table cloth on the table wrong side up. There was no mistaking which side was up because of the designs and colors. After a few months of watching this happen, she told the cook which side of the tablecloth was up. The cook responded with, "Well, who made that rule?" This story was told to illustrate that when we are in a new culture, the rules change and that we are learning to adjust to their rules and not ours.

Upon our return, I went to Elijah's room to check to see how it fared while we were away. Our bahini had been coming to our place a few days a week to clean, dust, and keep the house from being infested by cockroaches. I broke into a laughter when I saw his bookshelf....I had a good laugh and was quickly reminded again that we continue in cultural adjustment...